Well Irv,

Now I am completely baffled. I know I tried it that way before and it didn't work, but after reading your note I tried it again and it works great, so thank you.

Brian
>In Init event of a Form I do something like this:
>
>

>Testvar = 'Agenttrack.name'
>THIS.Text2.ControlSource =  Testvar
>

>
>...and it works, assigning the value from the table...check your spelling and table names, etc...
>
>HTH,
>
>-Irv.
>
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>I have a user defined screen in which I want to assign the controsource of a textbox to a value stored in a variable.
>>
>>This works fine:
>>.controlsource='ARCHIVE.FAX'
>>
>>I have a table called udarc which holds the field_name I want to assign as the control source
>>unfortunately when I do:
>>
>>lcsource='ARCHIVE.'+udarc.field_name
>>.controlsource=lcsource
>>
>>I get:
>>
>>the data source for this object must be a variable reference.
>>
>>In this case of course the value in udarc.field_name is 'FAX'
>>
>>How do I get this to work?
>>
>>Thanks in advance,
>>
>>Brian